Back in May, we covered how Google is planning on releasing an algorithm to promote subject authorities in the search results. Some call this the "good guy algorithm" and some call it the "author authority algorithm," while others may have some other names for it.
Part of episode 227 on TWiG, Google is not only trying to break the spirits of the "bad guys" but he also mentioned they are trying to promote the good guys.
Craig Moore transcribed what Matt Cutts of Google said on Google+. He said it about 1 hour and 20 minutes into the video.
We have been working on a lot of different stuff. We are actually now doing work on how to promote good guys. So if you are an authority in a space, if you search for podcasts, you want to return something like Twit.tv. So we are trying to figure out who are the authorities in the individual little topic areas and then how do we make sure those sites show up, for medical, or shopping or travel or any one of thousands of other topics. That is to be done algorithmically not by humans ... So page rank is sort of this global importance. The New York times is important so if they link to you then you must also be important. But you can start to drill down in individual topic areas and say okay if Jeff Jarvis (Prof of journalism) links to me he is an expert in journalism and so therefore I might be a little bit more relevant in the journalistic field. We're trying to measure those kinds of topics. Because you know you really want to listen to the experts in each area if you can.
I am terribly interested to know when this launches and how it impacts the results.
Google has not given an ETA to this launch, and I don't expect them to. But with any winners, in this case the "good guys", others will see loses. So while this algorithm may be about promoting content, some content will ultimately drop in the results because of it.
Forum discussion at Google+.
